Yoga sweats are not pants

I will never forget her. I was inside the Java U when a crunchy-haired brunette with oversized sunglasses waltzed up and ordered herself a café concoction.

The silver reflective logo on her Lululemon yoga pants caught my eye, and then I noticed she was wearing high heels. High heels! With boot cut sweats!

This woman was obviously not heading to the gym. Nay, she was wearing yoga pants as real pants, complete with a blouse and heels.

It was a fashion faux pas that’s becoming all too common these days. The yoga-pant revolution has created mass confusion about where or where not to don casual dress — let alone how to wear it. And the bar of what’s acceptable is threatening to get lower and lower.

As we peel off our winterwear this spring, “pyjama dressing” is rolling in as the latest casual-dressing craze. As in, floral motif PJ-style pants and onesies for the teens. For a more mature look, there’s boudoir-inspired Hugh Hefner silks, which capture a vacationing-in-Bali sort of glamour.

We’ve seen the look for evening, but during the day the look can appear, well, very breakfast style.

There’s no telling whether or not PJ dressing will become the next big thing among Canadians. But one thing is for sure: Throughout the eras, we’ve traipsed around in our snowflake-patterned long-johns, lumberjack shirts, woolly Hudson Bay coats, Roots sweatsuits (which are increasingly popular among teens), and Gore-Tex. We are certainly not beyond PJs.

Whether we’re ready to move beyond the yoga pant is yet to be seen.

“Don’t say you’ve become a mother and then have to conform to this Lululemon mantra,” says Valerie Grove, a new mother who has witnessed many of her friends quickly convert from fashion vixens into leisure-suit loyalists.

“Just because you want to feel comfortable, and are shlepping around a kid doesn’t mean you have to look like you’re wearing your PJs.”

Grove holds a weekly playgroup at her house. Of the 10 moms who attend, about half are in yoga pants (Lululemons specifically). The rest are in jeans and possibly leggings with stylish sweaters.Turns out, Grove does not consider leggings a fashion faux pas like yoga pants. In fact, she considers them an ideal way to be comfortable and look fashionable, especially when paired with boots or a long sweater.

“They could be velvet, denim or even nicer fabrics,” she says. But she hesitates to say leggings look appropriate for a night out on the town.

As for wearing yoga pants anywhere beyond the house, the gym or out for a power walk, Grove believes that “it’s like telling the world you haven’t showered. ‘Hello, I haven’t showered.’ That’s what it is.”

For many Canadians, the look is all about comfort Tina Fargnoli is a yoga-trained, certified Pilates instructor in Toronto. She reports having at least 25 pairs of yoga pants, again, specifically Lululemons. Other pairs seem cheap to her, and the fabric all wrong. When I asked her to name the styles, her reply was: “Oh gosh. Well, there’s the crop, the regular long ones with a flare, the regular straight leg ones, which are not flared, the hip hugger ones. Some are more formal ones that are three-quarter-length culottes.”

Fargnoli says lately she’s more into the company’s running pants, which look a lot like conventional leggings. She wears them with leg warmers.

“My friend even said to me at one point — and this is like four or five years ago — ‘Seriously Tina, I’ve never seen anyone wear so much Lululemon in my life,” she said.

“I wear them all the time, not just to work.”

This, and the fact that her mom once nicknamed her ‘Lulu-Tina’, just makes her laugh.

Fargnoli has Lululemons that she considers “too nice” for yoga, which she proudly wears out to dinner and for a night on the town. These include pinstripe yoga pants with built-in belts, which she wears with blazers, and a number of the company’s sundresses. She says she wears the skorts out a lot, too, pairing them with nice tops. Many of these items have similar fabrics to the company’s yoga pants.

“Sometimes, I dress up and feel awkward. I think, ‘I’d rather be in my sweats now,’” she said.

“I’m comfortable and happy with it.”

Would she wear yoga pants — or sweats as she calls them — with heels?

“Funny. Just yesterday I saw someone in really high heels with cropped Lululemons,” she said. “And I can now say that I would absolutely never.”

Fargnoli has worn her yoga pants with wedge sandals, but typically she wears them with her Pajar boots in the winter and her Etinies sneakers or flip-flops in the summer.

Thanks to active moms and yoga babes like Fargnoli, not to mention those Sunday strollers, the leisure wear business is booming. According to a recent New York Times article, sales at Lululemon increased 56 per cent in the third quarter last year. The story also went on to report how women in New York City are donning elastic waistband pants to work — at offices, not just yoga studios. Will Canadians be joining the elastic waistband office-gear trend?

“Our reality as Canadians is not there,” says Lindy Omassi, director of fashion and sourcing at Smart Set, a division of Reitmans.

“I work with all fashion people, and nobody wears yoga pants to work.”

She also speculates that no matter how trendy leisure wear may be in the future, with Alexander Wang showing uber-hip versions, or however popular Juicy Couture once was at a point in time, she highly doubts anyone would walk into a downtown office wearing anything close to active or leisure wear. Though, Omassi does believe the look can appear very cool on some people, particularly those “with a body from heaven.”

And ultimately, people should wear what suits them.

“The reality is to dress to please yourself,” she said.

But as far as the office or out to dinner, she would not recommend yoga pants. Like Grove, she believes active or leisure wear is for brunch, around the house and for the gym.

Smart Set’s MUV activewear line features yoga pants and leggings at about $30 to $35 apiece.

Omassi and her colleagues have endlessly debated where these clothes would be worn, and how. They concluded that what Smart Set customers really care about is looking polished in their leisure suits.

“We don’t do schlump,” Omassi said.

Even the latest retro-cool elastic ankle sweat pants by MUV are streamlined, sans excess bouffant. Then there are those who believe the schlumpier the better.

“I see the most fashionable pant nowadays as the pyjama pants,” says designer Andy The-Anh, who has started to design for activewear company Lole.

“With the draw string, and big wide leg.”

He says fashion needs to go to extremes to work — as in go skinny with leggings or go wide with pyjama pants, but stay home in your boot-cut pants.

“A boot cut, that’s a no-no,” he said for fashionable looks.

However, The-Anh says he won’t be designing pyjama-style yoga pants for Lole, and probably will stick to legging types.

The company has a “studio to the streets” product mantra, which features a strong activewear component.

“All the [aerobics] instructors prefer a more tapered legging look, so you can see the lines of your body,” he said.

As such, for his Lole designs, The-Anh is working with new colours, such as orange, to spice things up.

In terms of dressing up leggings, he says, “when you have leggings covering the feet — I think it’s beautiful with four-inch heels!”

For a more causal daytime look, a big sweater or sweater dress can do the trick. But The-Anh also says there are different types of leggings, or running pants, as they’re called in activewear circles.

Those with seams that define the muscles tend to be more sporty, while plainer styles are more fashion-friendly.

Again, as far as boot cut sweats or yoga pants go, “Even for a coffee — I don’t think so,” he said.

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Yoga sweats are not pants

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